Forbes has a story about YouTube with a few hard, if unsourced, financial numbers � the kind Google and YouTube keep very close to the vest.
The article, by Quentin Hardy and Evan Hessel, says YouTube is going to bring in $200 million this year, and possibly $350 million next year. From one perspective that's small taters (the fourth "Indiana Jones" made $126 million in four days), but it's a heck of a lot more than YouTube was making last year, and if there's one sure thing about YouTube, it's that the site isn't going to stop growing anytime soon. It now gets more than 50% of its traffic from overseas (cagey 'Tube executives won't say how much more, but some of us think it's a lot), and they're making partnership deals like rabbits � CBS, Scripps, Universal Music and now even their competitor Hulu.
A few of the other interesting stats from the article, headlined "GooTube":
- A branded channel (a YouTube page devoted to a product or manufacturer) costs $200,000. Bonus question: Is Scientology's YouTube page a branded channel?
- The big ad on the YouTube homepage costs $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to drop $50,000 more on YouTube or Google ads.
- Web video ad spending is expected to be $1.35 billion this year, up from $775 million in 2007.
- There's not much money in user-generated video: Rates for ads next to such content are down 45% since February, to 18 cents per 1,000 pageviews, according to digital analytics company PubMatic. Of course, that can add up after a few billion views ...
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